The present invention relates to automotive air conditioners, and more particularly belongs to the technology of arrangement for disposing driving mechanisms and actuators for dampers provided in an air conditioning unit.
As disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication NO. 9-123748, for example, conventionally known as an automotive air conditioner of this type is one provided with: an air conditioning unit, disposed inside an instrument panel of a car roughly in the widthwise center thereof, for accommodating two heat exchangers, i.e., cooling and heating heat exchangers; and an air blowing unit, disposed inside the instrument panel toward a passenger's seat, for blowing air to the air conditioning unit.
The air conditioning unit is provided at a lower end thereof with an air intake through which air from the air blowing unit is introduced. The air introduced through the air intake passes through the cooling and heating heat exchangers, juxtaposed one above the other over the air intake to extend substantially horizontally, and then the air is introduced to the cabin via a duct connected to a portion of the air conditioning unit above the heat exchangers. In this air conditioner, the two heat exchangers are juxtaposed one above the other to reduce the size of the air conditioning unit, thus reducing its installation space.
However, in the exemplary conventional air conditioner, the lower end of the vertically elongated air conditioning unit is located near a floor of the car body, and the air blowing unit needs to be disposed substantially distant from the floor to secure legroom for the passenger's seat. Because of this, an outlet of the air blowing unit and the air intake at the lower end of the air conditioning unit are vertically deviated from each other to a considerable extent; therefore, both the units must be separated from each other in the widthwise direction of the car by a distance equal to or greater than a predetermined distance to smoothly send air from the air blowing unit to the air conditioning unit.
Meanwhile, the air conditioning unit having the functions of a heater and a cooler is provided with a temperature control damper for controlling the temperature of conditioned air and a discharge direction switching damper for switching the discharge direction of conditioned air. Since at least two actuators have to be provided to separately actuate these dampers, it is hard to provide the layout of the actuators and link mechanisms (driving mechanisms).
The present invention has been made in view of the above problems and its object is to further reduce the size of an air conditioner, in which cooling and heating heat exchangers are juxtaposed one above the other and air is sent from an air blowing unit, disposed next to an air conditioning unit and toward a passenger's seat, toward a lower end of the air conditioning unit, by contriving the layout of driving mechanisms and actuators for dampers in the air conditioning unit.